If you are considering going to Auckland in January for the Australian Federation of Family History Organisations 12th Congress then let me remind you that the early-bird registration closes on the 30th September. If you were not considering going then let me try to change your mind!

This is a marvellous opportunity to hear speakers from around the world and to learn more about how to find your ancestors and discover more about their lives. The opportunity to mingle with other researchers is also a huge, often overlooked, benefit. People who think the way we do! People who don’t think it’s odd to include cemeteries in the sights of a town, and who understand how exciting each new discovery is.

Dick Eastman, the technology guru; Paul Allen, co-founder of Ancestry.com and now the CEO of FamilyLink; Elaine Collins, Commercial Director of FindMyPast; John Grenham, the Irish research guru; Michael Gandy, editor of the Society of Genealogists’ journal and a very entertaining speaker; Megan Smolenyak, an expert on DNA research; Cora Num, website guru; these are a few of the famous international speakers that will be lecturing and running workshops over the four days of the conference.

Topics cover research in Australia, England, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, technology, DNA, and specific how-to sessions such as preserving documents and heirlooms and writing your family history. Many sessions run concurrently so that you can always find something of interest for every session, and some lectures are repeated at other times so you can sort out clashes in the programme with other lectures you want to see. Hands-on workshops are available in many of these subject areas as well.

Accommodation is available at the College where the conference will be run, or alternatives can be found in nearby motels.

These Congresses are only run every three years. The last one was in Darwin in 2006 and I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it; it could have gone on for another four days and I would have been happy! The next one will be in Adelaide in 2012, which seems a long way away at the moment.

Here is the message from the Convenor, Richard Hollier:

REMINDER

For those of you who have not yet registered for the AFFHO 2009 Congress this email is to remind you that the earlybird registration closes on 30 September 2008.

Still undecided?

Look at the benefits:

Around 15 speakers from outside Australasia

Four consecutive lecture streams

Plus parallel workshop stream with up to 4 additional options

Networking with fellow genealogists from throughout the world

On site accommodation in gorgeous surroundings

Range of social events and tours

Registration cost lower than previous AFFHO congresses and comparable to NZSG when compared on a daily cost

This is a rare opportunity to hear such learned speakers covering a single topic of Irish relevance in such depth. Cost is $45 including lunch and morning and afternoon tea. Bookings through the Genealogical Society of Victoria on (03) 9662 4455.

Far From Famine – a gathering of the descendants of Irish Famine orphans 1848-1850

St Clement’s Monastery is host to Shamrock in the Bush every year. This special gathering is to be held in honour of the 4114 female orphans sent to the Australian colonies from Irish workhouses between 1848 and 1850 during the Great Famine, although you don’t need to be descended from one of these orphans to attend.

Keynote speaker will be Irish archaeologist and historian Michael Gibbons. The long list of speakers will include Richard Reid, Cheryl Mongan, Perry McIntyre, Cora Num, Brad Manera, Jeff Brownrigg, and many others on a range of topics related to Irish and Australian history and the immigration of the Irish to Sydney, Moreton Bay, Victoria and South Australia.

Workshops and research assistance will be available from Cora Num and other experienced researchers. Irish Australian music and culture will be on display, with entertainment provided in the evenings. A ecumenical thanksgiving service and commemorative tree-planting have also been organised.

This is a marvellous opportunity to immerse yourself in the history and culture of this period in Australia’s history. The price includes accommodation, all meals, lectures and entertainment, including the official dinner in Galong House on the Saturday night. The price varies according to the accommodation chosen from $570 to $640 for 5 nights with a discount offered for payment before 30th August.

Full details of the programme and further information can be found at the website or by emailing the organisers at famine@shamrockinthebush.org.au.

This seminar day is still in the planning stages but promises to be another excellent opportunity for Irish researchers in Sydney. Organised by Perry McIntyre. More details will become available at the Society of Australian Genealogists in the next few weeks.

A regular feature on the calendar of the Society of Australian Genealogists is a genealogical tour of Ireland hosted by Perry McIntyre and Richard Reid. These tours are very popular and focus on repositories of interest to researchers. The exact itinerary can be tailored to the interests of participants.

I hope to see you at one or more of these events – please say hello!

If you know of any other Irish seminars or events please let me know and I will include them here.

Irish research is a greater challenge than for other countries for many reasons. The lack of indexes, online or otherwise, and the large number of censuses and other resources that were destroyed make Irish research more difficult, but not impossible, from Australia. I have ancestors from Northern Ireland and it is very difficult to find any information about them, and to trace them back further, without going to Ireland. One day I will go to Ireland but until then I have to make do with what I can find online and in books and microfilms.

It is becoming easier, though, with records being indexed and transcriptions being made available on a pay-pre-view basis. I’d like to share some basic principles that are important to Irish research, and a few websites that I have found worthwhile.

Place is important

To find your Irish ancestors you need to know where in Ireland they came from. If you are lucky the parish or townland will be given on the death certificate or immigration list. Convict records may also be helpful here, especially later ones after about 1820. It is practically impossible without a more specific place than just “Ireland” or the name of the county, especially for the many common Irish surnames. Of course, you would no more expect to find your ancestor if you only knew he came from Ireland than if he came from England or Scotland – you need something more specific than that.

If you do have a place and you can’t find a town or a parish by that name then it may be a townland. Try this townland search to narrow it down. The spelling may not be correct, so you may have to experiment a bit, as it was difficult for the early clerks to understand the Irish names they were hearing, and the Irish person concerned may not have been able to read what was written in any case.

What about the Censuses?

Of course, if you only knew that your ancestor came from “England” and had a relatively uncommon surname, and perhaps a middle name, you might find him in the English censuses. For Ireland there is not this option, as almost all of the censuses before the 1901 census were either purposefully destroyed, “recycled” during World War I or lost in the great fire at the Public Record Office in 1922. Both the 1901 and 1911 Censuses have been released and are available on microfilm. For many of us, these censuses are too late to tell us anything about our ancestors who left Ireland many years before.

If you’ve ever asked about Irish research you’ve probably been told about “census substitutes”. These are records that would not be very interesting to family history researchers had the censuses been available, but have taken on great significance in their absence. The two most popular are:

The Tithe Applotment Books 1824-1838 list the occupiers of land for the purposes of calculating the tithes payable to the Established Church, the Church of Ireland. Tithes were not payable on all land and seemed to fall heaviest on the poor, so although not all householders are listed, your ancestor may be.

The Primary Valuation of Ireland, known as Griffith’s Valuation, was made between 1848 and 1864 and lists every householder and occupier of land in all of Ireland. Online indexes are available

These sources only list the head of households and not whole families, so it is more difficult to identify names on the lists as being your ancestors. They show the concentration of surnames in a given area and that can be very useful as a starting point if you only know your ancestor came from “Ireland”.

Online sources

First the bad news – there is very little available online that is free.There may be the occasional kind soul who has transcribed a series of records and put them on the web for everyone to enjoy, but you will be very lucky to find anything relevant to your county, let alone a specific parish. Still, some people are lucky, so do a search on the search engine of your choice and good luck.

For the rest of us there are pay-per-view (PPV) sites. Here are a few of the biggest ones:

AncestryIreland.com is the website of the Ulster Historical Foundation. They are a pay-per-view site where you can search for free and you buy credits to see the details. If you join their guild, the Ulster Genealogical and Historical Guild, then you pay half-price for credits. They specialise in counties Antrim and Down, but they have many records from the other seven Ulster counties, including a large gravestone index. Their History From Headstones site also allows free searching of the index, with payment required to view inscriptions. Their army of volunteers are adding more databases all the time.

Also specialising in Northern Ireland is Emerald Ancestors with birth, death, marriage and census records. They also sell ebooks of rare out-of-prints books, manuscripts and accounts of life in Ireland.

Irish Genealogy has been established by the Irish Genealogical Project to coordinate records from all the Irish Family History Foundation centres over the whole of the island of Ireland. These centres, one for each county or two counties, are responsible for collecting, indexing and computerising church records, civil records, census returns, census substitutes, graveyard inscriptions, and other relevant material. Their Online Record Search contains parish register indexes for many counties.

Their gravestone inscriptions, for example, currently only cover the nine counties of Ulster and seem to include different graveyards than those covered by the Ulster Historical Foundation. Once you have been given the results of your search you can select, and pay for, the record of your choice. They can point you to the relevant county research centre.

Irish Origins is part of the Origins Network which gives unlimited access to their collection for a limited period – 72 hours or monthly. Griffith’s Valuation 1847-1864, Irish Wills Index 1484-1858, the Irish Tithe Defaulters 1831, the 1901 Census for Dublin City and the Griffith’s Survey Maps and Plans are some of the highlights of this collection. Partnered by Eneclann, the Trinity College, Dublin, research and publishing company.

Irish Family Research transcribes old books and documents and makes them available online for subscribers. Directories, graveyard inscriptions, newspapers, landowners lists and Griffiths Valuations are some of the databases you might find. They are adding more all the time. There are some free databases available for registered users, and then different levels of membership allow access to more content, with Premium Members able to request lookups from material not yet transcribed.

The Irish Times newspaper has a large Irish Ancestors site with input from John Grenham, a well-known writer on Irish genealogy (see Sources below). Initial searches are free and then payment is on a credit system, or you can pay for a subscription. Surname searches give the numbers of times the surname appears in the Griffiths Valuation by county (for free) and parish (for a fee). An ancestor search gives a personalised report of sources to be searched (not the sources themselves) for the ancestor in question, based on the information you enter.

There is a large section of links to Irish genealogy websites, and a Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary (1837) database with detailed information on the town or parish you select and a map of the county. You can also commission research from their research partners at Eneclann, the Trinity College, Dublin, research and publishing company.

Irish Newspaper Archives has a large database of digitised images of Irish newspapers from all over Ireland including the Irish Independent, The Freemans’ Journal, the Connacht Tribune, the Meath Chronicle, and the Donegal News.

Over the years the Family History Library of the LDS Church has microfilmed everything that they have been able to lay their hands on. Unfortunately what they were able to film in Ireland is less than we would hope, but you may be lucky enough to find what you want in their library.

Search in the Family History Library Catalog for the placename in Ireland if you have it. Again, be adventurous with the spelling that you found on the death certificate or other record.

Films can be ordered and viewed through your local Family History Library or some genealogy societies. The 1901 and 1911 Censuses can also be viewed in this way. Some libraries may have these on permanent loan.

The Family History Library has a new project underway to digitise and index a large number of records from all over the world. These will be available in due course on their new Record Search site, which is currently in the pilot stage. There are mostly USA records so far but more are being added as the many volunteers get them indexed. Many of the Irish civil registration indexes are being indexed now (I’ve done a few myself) and so should be available soon – Births 1884-1921; Marriages 1868-1958; Deaths 1864-1921 at this stage. It’s a great way to become familiar with Irish names and districts.

Other sites:

The Irish Famine Memorial at Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney lists names of 400 orphans who were shipped out to Australia from the workhouses in Ireland in 1848-1850 as part of the Earl Grey Scheme.

Irish War Memorials contains photos, text of all inscriptions and a name search of all persons listed on war memorials all over Ireland.

I was born in Sydney and grew up in country NSW. I've lived in Sydney since leaving school and starting university. My mother is the descendant of farmers and graziers on her father's side, and professionals on her mother's; and my father is a South Sea Islander. Read More…